Walking in Waterloo Region

[danbrotherston]

Seriously? I can't believe how quickly I have to turn around an defend ac3r after just calling him an idiot. Do any of you talk to real humans outside of your terminally online extremist echo chambers? No one says "fanboying", and "fangirling" is basically a gender neutral expression at this point.

I can understand, if you misrepresent that general intent of that statement, how you might call it sexist. But homophobic?

First of all, you don't have to defend anyone...nobody is forcing you to, you're welcome to just say nothing...just because you feel someone is wrong on the internet™️ doesn't mean you have to present a defence. And in fact, doing so would be the fastest way to move past this conversation and get back to actual discussion (you see what I mean when earlier I said that ac3r's disrespectful and derogatory rhetoric degrades the conversation here).

Second of all, you're just wrong. I mean, I agree, homophobic isn't the right word, sexist/misogynistic is however.

Again, it's not a secret, it isn't a surprise, we all know that NJBs audience, and this forum is largely dominated by male voices. I'm sure ac3r also knows this.

"fanboy" might be a neutral term, but "fangirl" is clearly not (that too is unfortunately part of the inherent sexism of our society but it's true). Their choice to use "fangirl" rather than any neutral term is not an accident. Now the only question remains one of motivation.

So yeah, maybe they're just a quirky person who likes to say weird things and it's just a chaotic choice...but given their record of spewing emotionally charged and largely negative, even hateful rhetoric, there is no reason to ascribe a chaotic motivation rather than an intentional one. They intended, as Bytor put it best, to use a sexist insult to dismiss the views of a group of people (us in this case).

To use a metaphor, you are hearing a dog whistle and you are insisting that there is a dog...and there ain't no dog to be seen.